


The Name She Carries

by Bouzingo



Series: Red Cashmere Sweater. [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Natasha starts shit, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, SHIELD, Sharon's a kid, a career kid, free-form, genre typical action and violence, we'll see where this goes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-05-08 03:02:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5480846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bouzingo/pseuds/Bouzingo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Young, inexperienced, and mouthy, Sharon Carter makes a mistake, and suddenly her job is finding something else to sustain her apart from her nascent career and the name she carries. Alternately: Sharon and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad six-week suspension.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Sharon, for the first time in her life, is stuck between a rock and a hard place. She knows what her aunt would do, what her superiors would do, and what her partner would do. But with explosions ringing tinny in her ear, and her driver shot, and her arm hurt and bleeding, Sharon can’t think of what _she_ would do.

Numbly, she kicks pushes the driver out of the car and twists the keys in the ignition.

* * *

 

“You only need to tell the truth,” Peggy says to her, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. Sharon looks in the mirror, wishes she could do something with her hair. Her arm is in a cast though, so anything more strenuous than a ponytail is out of the question.

“What if they don’t believe the truth?” Sharon asks.

“You did what you needed to survive. You thought the driver was dead,” Peggy says. “What wouldn’t they believe?”

“That I didn’t know,” Sharon says.

“You didn’t know, correct?”

“Yeah,” Sharon says. The Carter women look in the mirror together, sure that someone is looking back.

Sharon tries not to look at Nick Fury, though he’s sitting right across from her. Beside him, Maria Hill is perusing a thin file, Sharon’s file, spectacles making her seem sterner than usual. Then there are three other people Sharon doesn’t know, and the stenographer. Sharon looks at the wall just past Fury’s head and takes a deep breath.

“Okay, Agent Sharon Carter,” Maria says, removing her glasses. She takes a drink of water, and continues. “We are here to discuss your actions on the eighteenth of April, two-thousand-five. You were stationed in the city of Gapolli, with Agents Ken Cheung and Astrid Bellman, correct?”

“Yes,” Sharon says. She feels thirsty, and watches Maria take another sip of water.

“When did you arrive in Gapolli?”

“The first of April.”

“What was your business there?”

“I was acquiring documents relevant to the Liebowitz case,” Sharon says. “Bram Liebowitz was a scientist forced to work with HYDRA in the days after the Second World War. His work in genetic engineering and…”

“The tribunal is familiar with the details of the Liebowitz case, Agent Carter,” one of the people Sharon doesn’t know interrupts. Sharon opens her mouth, and shuts it. Peggy told her to be helpful and pleasant, two things that have never come naturally to her. The stenographer’s typing is like a tattoo on her brain and her arm aches.

“Did you acquire the documents you set out to find?” Maria continues, still perfectly neutral. Sharon swallows, and nods.

“Yes,” she says for the record.

“When did you acquire these documents?”

“On the tenth,” Sharon says.

“But you remained in Gapolli,” Maria says. “For about a week.”

“Correct.”

“Any particular reason for your extended stay?”

“I found evidence of tampered or forged documents in the parcel I acquired on the tenth,” Sharon says, and her eyes flicker to Fury for only a moment. “I wanted to ensure that I wasn’t disseminating misinformation regarding this active and sensitive case. I had to retrace my steps.”

“Did Agents Bellman or Cheung know the reason for your delay?”

“No. They left on the eleventh.”

“Miss Carter, this was not a part of your mission,” one of the men she doesn’t know says.

“Agent,” she says, bristling. “That’s _Agent_ Carter. And it is my job to make sure that any information I acquire is, in fact, information. So I stayed in Gapolli to do my job.”

“Not to take part in the riot.”

“What _riot_?” Sharon says, and tries to rein it in, her rage. Fails. “We knew going in that the government was fucking the cat and making students disappear and that people were angry. That wasn’t a riot, it was an uprising. I would have left with Bellman and Cheung, on the tenth, only the package of documents I was given was suspicious, and I needed to investigate.”

There’s a long silence. Hill writes something in her notes. Sharon still can’t look at Fury.

“So let’s go over the events of the eighteenth,” Hill says with a cough. “Agent Carter, you were on your way to the airport?”

“Agent Hill, that is a leading question.”

“I was being driven to the airport,” Sharon nods. “When the explosions and gunshots started. I had my sidearm, but a bullet smashed the car’s windshield and another hit my right arm. My driver was a civilian, I _thought_ he was a civilian, and he didn’t expect the sudden violence. He turned the car around and got shot in the head. There were insurgents outside encroaching on the vehicle and I had a briefcase which was full of sensitive documents that would either get destroyed or else fall into the wrong hands. So I pushed the driver out of the vehicle and I drove.”

“You were not aware that the driver was alive.”

_“No.”_

“You were not aware he was an undercover agent,” says Fury. This is the first time he’s spoken since this meeting started.

“He was undercover,” Sharon says, “How was I supposed to know unless he told me?”

There’s a very long silence, and Sharon wants to stick her whole arm, cast and all, into her mouth because she just sassed Nick Fury.

“Well, Miss Carter…”

 _“Agent.”_ Sharon says. She wants to punch this blond asshole in the face.

“Well, we’ll see.”

* * *

 

“It could have gone worse,” Sharon says. “I could have accidentally lit someone on fire.”

“It certainly couldn’t have gone that badly,” Peggy says.

“But it did. Somehow,” Sharon mutters. “I talked back to Fury and I nearly called this other asshole what he was. I’m going to get suspended, Aunt Peggy. I just know it.”

“Suspension isn’t all bad,” Peggy says, and tops up Sharon’s glass of wine. “Plenty of time to pursue independent projects, catch up with friends. Perhaps visit your parents? Your mother tells me all the time how you don’t call or visit.”

Sharon sighs, and looks out the window. The reason she chose SHIELD over the CIA, despite zealous courtship from both when she was in high school, was the fact that SHIELD isn’t based in Mom and Dad’s backyard. Working in Quantico would have precipitated dinner with her parents every weekend. Washington DC at least puts a state border and bad traffic between her and pork roast each Friday.

And it means she won’t have to explain why she’s already job hunting. Sharon’s pretty sure she’d make a fair to good barista.

“You’re overthinking,” Peggy says. “You don’t even know the tribunal’s decision, and you’re fretting over it already. Drink your wine.”

“If you insist,” Sharon says, a pale attempt at a joke.

“You remind me a lot of him,” Peggy says. “Finding something you can’t change, and then turning it over in your head until you can.”

“Thanks, Aunt Peggy,” she says, smile a little brighter. “That means a lot.”

She still has no idea how she’s going to change this.

* * *

“You are a disaster at tribunals,” Nick Fury says, as a preface to their meeting.

“I consider myself efficient,” Sharon says, and bites her lip. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re lucky I know you’re mostly respectful,” Nick says. “When you’re not putting your foot squarely in your mouth.”

“Thank you, sir,” Sharon says.

“The consensus was that you didn’t knowingly abandon an active agent in an unstable territory,” Fury says. “And that you weren’t knowingly withholding documents of vital importance from SHIELD. And what could be interpreted as betrayal or perhaps blind ignorance was in fact just inexperience in the field.”

“Thank you,” Sharon says.

“I hope you understand that the reason we’ve been lenient in this case begins and ends with your youth and the name you carry,” Fury says. Sharon bristles.

“My work on the Liebowitz case…”

“History lesson for you, Carter,” Fury says. “Misinformation is still information. In the Cold War most agencies traded on misinformation until they could parse the truth. We have analysts and counter-intelligence experts who are paid because they can spot a forged signature with 99 point accuracy. On the other hand, you are paid because you can collect documents, falsified or no, in an efficacious and urgent matter.”

“I made the right call,” Sharon says.

“As the director of SHIELD and _your boss, Agent,_ I am saying you did not.”

Fury’s glare penetrates to the bone. Sharon bites her lip again.

“Thank you, sir. Sorry,” she says.

“How old are you?” Fury says.

“I’m turning twenty next month,” Sharon says. She hates the question, and the reason is in the way Fury’s gaze softens.

“When was the last time you had a vacation?”

“I don’t want a vacation.”

“Carter, the technical term is suspension with pay,” Fury says. “And ‘with pay’ was a hotly contested point when we made that decision.”

“I understand, sir,” Sharon says.

“If that’s understood, I have work,” Fury says, gestures to a desk that’s covered in paperwork.

“I’m more than a name, Commander,” Sharon says.

“When you come back from your vacation, Agent Carter, I expect that you’ll prove it,” Fury says, and that’s the end of the meeting.


	2. Chapter 2

At the requisite ‘Congrats, you’re not fired, you’re just suspended with pay and it’s also close enough to your birthday so we can celebrate that too!’ party, Bellman buys Sharon her first Stoli.

“I don’t like vodka,” Sharon says.

“How can you have an opinion on vodka, Carter?” Bellman says. “You’re like twelve. Anyway, this one tastes like raspberries.”

“If you say so,” Sharon says.

“So, what are you going to do with six weeks of SHIELD-footed vacation?” Cheung asks.

“I’m going to read _Infinite Jest_ ,” Sharon says. Cheung and Bellman groan simultaneously.

“ _I’ve told you_ , it’s not worth it,” Bellman says.

“Suspension is wasted on you,” Cheung says. “I’d tell you what I’d do. I’d go to a country with good food and that’s not on the verge of a geopolitical meltdown. And I’d just eat and relax.”

“I’d go to a spa. Every day,” Bellman says. “I’m telling you Carter, the time is going to come where you haven’t been not working for ten solid years, and you’re going to look back and just be like ‘Fuck! What was I thinking reading _Infinite Jest_ instead of actually enjoying myself?’”

“I actually like this,” Sharon says, gesturing to the empty Stoli. “Order me another one.”

“Anything for the almost birthday girl,” Bellman says. “Want to try an orange one?”

“I can unwind,” Sharon slurs into Cheung’s lapel as he’s loading her into a cab at the end of the night. “I can be really relaxed and self-assured.”

“You sure can, Carter. You’re the whole package,” Cheung promises, and gives Sharon’s address to the driver.

Sharon like the little apartment she has to herself, but she doesn’t like sleeping alone, especially when she’s kind of tipsy and sad about being fired (suspended, vacationing _, whatever_ ).

She has bad dreams, though she hasn’t told anyone about them yet. Dreams where she’s on the Howling Commandoes and just lets everyone down, especially Aunt Peggy. Dreams where there are long corridors lined with doors, all locked. Her arm hurts and she doesn’t sleep much.

She has a voice mail from her mom the next morning. She doesn’t want to listen, but realizes midway through the laborious one-armed process of getting dressed that she doesn’t exactly need to be anywhere at seven in the morning.

“Hey sweetheart, it’s your mother,” Amanda Carter says. “Your aunt called and gave us the news! Paid vacation! Wow-ee! Your dad and I are coming up to visit, I thought we might have a nice dinner together. I’ll call you again when we’re in the District, baby!”

“Mom _no_ ,” Sharon groans, and shakes off her button up shirt. Just like Aunt Peggy to mention that Sharon is free for six weeks too.

Filling the day proves to be a challenge. Naturally an early riser, Sharon generally goes to the gym first thing, but is impeded today by two things: her arm and the fact that her gym is in SHIELD headquarters. With a huff she goes to do her groceries instead.

Sharon _hates_ doing groceries more than maybe anything.  She stares at things that she doesn’t know how to cook because her high school didn’t teach home-ec and fills a basket with apples and microwave dinners.

“You’re a mess,” someone says, and Sharon looks up from where she’s surveying the readymade sandwiches. Natasha Romanov stands there, wearing sunglasses indoors and drinking a juice.

“I don’t like shopping for food,” she says as a defense. “What are you doing here?”

“Drinking juice. Watching you,” Natasha says, single red eyebrow raised over her sunglasses. She’s not much older than Sharon, though apparently a childhood in the Soviet Union means you get to basically have seniority over everyone. “How much lasagna in a plastic tray do you eat every month?”

“Lasagna is the breakfast of champions,” Sharon mutters. “What are you actually doing here?”

“Just what I said,” Natasha smirks. “I thought you might want a friend.”

“No way you thought that,” Sharon sighs. Natasha shrugs.

“Maybe someone else thought it,” she says, and slurps on her straw. “Let’s get you and your sad apples out of here.”

“I like apples. I know how to eat them,” Sharon says, and reddens at the look of surprise and pity Natasha shoots at her.

“You’re not going to try and sneak back to headquarters, right?” Natasha says.

“No, why would I do that?” Sharon says, not at all convincingly.

“Because you’ve got nothing else going on?” Natasha says.

“That’s not true, I have a really good book I’ve been meaning to read.”

“Ew,” Natasha says. “Books.”

“And I’m having dinner with my parents tonight.”

“Parents,” Natasha says. “Ew. Why don’t you go to the movies? Those are fun.”

“Shouldn’t you be getting to headquarters or… something?”

“Classic avoidance tactic,” Natasha says. “Sorry Carter, you’re stuck with me. Luckily, I’m a hell of a lot of fun.”

“Anyway we can’t hang out,” Sharon says. “Because I’m having dinner with my parents tonight and I need the next three hours to get myself prepped for that.”

“Aww,” Natasha says. “What are you doing after dinner? I could pick you up in a company car and we could have a night on the town.”

“I…” Sharon falters, because usually what she does is go to bed early so she can get up and go to work. “I guess I could come with you.”

“That’s more like it! We’re going to have such a great time,” Natasha says, and disappears.

Sharon spends the rest of the day at home, catching up on _Friends_ and eating from an ice cream carton suspended in her sling. _Infinite Jest_ lies on her couch, in a perpetual state of starting to be read. True to her word, her mother calls as soon as they’re in DC, and Sharon has to begin the arduous journey to presentability.

While the doctor who set her arm covered showering and basic self-care with a cast, there’s a lot of things he didn’t cover, like hair and makeup.

“Are you all right?” Natasha asks while Sharon stabs herself in the eye with a mascara applicator.

“No! How did you get in here?” she demands.

“You have one deadlock on your door. That’s practically an invitation,” Natasha shrugs. “Do you need help? You look like you’re struggling.”

“I can shoot a gun with both hands, but ask me to put on eyeshadow with my non-dominant hand and _this_ happens,” Sharon says with a sigh.

“Come on, it’s not unsalvageable,” Natasha says, and sits Sharon down on the toilet. “Let’s see what we can do.”

A little bit later Sharon is in severe but acceptable makeup, and her hair is carefully tended to.

“Thanks,” she says. “My parents really get on my case if I don’t look like a professional young woman about town.”

“It’s dinner, not a job interview,” Natasha scoffs. “I can see where you got that stick up your ass.”

“Wow,” Sharon says. “Thanks.”

“I kid,” Natasha says. “They’re probably just concerned? I don’t know what parents do.”

“Oh,” Sharon says, remembering all of a sudden a goodly amount of Natasha’s fraught childhood, or what counts for one in her case. “Sorry.”

Natasha waves Sharon’s concern away, and it’s only then that Sharon registers the other woman rummaging through her closet.

“This is what I’m wearing,” she says. “I can barely wear anything else with this cast.”

“You look fine,” Natasha says. “I want to look nice for your parents now.”

“We’re not dating.”

“True,” Natasha says with a wiggle of her eyebrows. “But we could be fucking.”

Sharon’s whole face goes red, and Natasha laughs.

“I kid again,” she says. “I’m already accounted for.”

Sharon resists the urge to ask who. The rumours fly, even in SHIELD, where the employees all value how tightlipped they are. Maybe that’s why the workplace is filled with the most gossipy bitches out of any other office environment in DC.

“What about you?” Natasha continues. “Anyone special? Must be a civvy, if there is, right?”

“There isn’t anyone,” Sharon says, a little proud, a little indignant. “I’m too busy, and everyone I meet is like, forty.”

“Then what do you do for fun?”

“Uh,” Sharon says.

“Who do you hang out with?”

“The DC branch of the Jane Austen Society meets every couple weeks at the bar in the hub,” Sharon says.

“Who’s Jane Austen?”

“You’re joking.”

“Is she… political?” Natasha says. “She sounds political.”

“I have no idea if you’re fucking with me right now,” Sharon says. “She wrote _Pride and Prejudice.”_

“Oooh, I’ve heard of that one. Is she making any more movies?”

At that moment Sharon’s phone rings, and she answers, trying to forget this exchange.

“Sharon, we’re just a few blocks away. Dad’s going to pick you up, and I’m going to secure the table. Table for four, right?”

“Right, mom,” Sharon says.

“Okayyyy! I’ll see you then,” Mom ends on a singsong note.

“Dad’s probably right outside,” Sharon says. “We should go.”

“Yeah! Free food,” Natasha says.

“Hey, my parents think I work for the phone company,” Sharon says. “And they think I slipped and broke my arm.”

“Oh,” Natasha says. “So they don’t wonder why your aunt is so invested in your career at the phone company?”

“My parents are really good at denial. Don’t upset them? Please?” Sharon says.

“No problem,” Natasha promises.


	3. Chapter 3

“So Natasha,” Mom says with a wide smile that is definitely masking a baseline discomfort, and Sharon has another sip of the wine that came with her seafood ravioli. “Have you been working at Virgin for long?”

“Well, I’m actually liaising with Virgin on behalf of MTS,” Natasha says. “Moscow City Telephone. I’m here indefinitely while Virgin and MTS figure out a new plane for the Arctic Circle. I was working with Bell, but negotiations broke up in Montreal and we redoubled our efforts here. The move was abrupt for me; Sharon’s been kind enough to show me the sights.”

It’s actually disturbing how easy Natasha can lie, and how much Sharon almost believes they both work for the phone company as a result.

“Well that’s just grand,” Dad says, and gently nudges Sharon in the shoulder, the one attached to the kind of broken arm. “Networking with Russia, aren’t you going places, sweetie.”

“Yeah,” Sharon says with a wan smile, rubbing her shoulder. “Grand.”

“Harrison, _her arm,”_ Mom says, more than a little embarrassed.

“Sorry darling,” Dad says. Natasha is trying to catch Sharon’s eye but Sharon will not yield. Instead she looks at Natasha’s big bowl of plain white rice, with a little dish of something green to the side, and wonders why Natasha was so psyched for free food when literally all she was going to eat was rice.

“How are you liking America, Natasha?” Mom says.

“It’s busy,” Natasha says. “And the cost of bread is way down.”

She pushes around some rice, and adds the green stuff to a little portion of it. Sharon smirks, and looks down at her own food. Natasha gets a phone call, and excuses herself from the table for a minute. Sharon is then speared by the twin gazes of her parents.

“You didn’t tell us you were dating, Ronnie,” Dad says.

“What? I’m _not!_ ” Sharon says indignantly. “She’s just a work friend.”

“Really, dear, we’ve told you we’ll support you no matter what,” Mom says. “But make sure she’s not in it for the green card.”

“ _Mom!_ Gay marriage isn’t even legal in the Capitol yet,” Sharon says. “And we’re not dating.”

“Then why is she wearing the dress that you wore for your Cousin Eliza’s baptism?” Mom says with a knowing smirk. Sharon opens her mouth, then closes it.

“Gay is okay, Sharon,” Dad says sanctimoniously, just as Natasha comes back from the washroom.

“Sorry, that was super-urgent,” Natasha says, brushing her hair back into place as she sits down. Then she looks straight at Sharon with a very insinuating look. “Want to split a dessert, dearest? A slice of that cheesecake is about a foot tall and simply covered in strawberries.”

* * *

 

When Sharon wakes up from another nightmare, she feels an odd sense of disappointment that Natasha isn’t there. Her arm is sore and she gets up to get her drugs. Two of the good pills later and she’s settled back into bed, staring at the wall in front of her. She thinks for a moment that she needs to get back to sleep, that she needs to be up early tomorrow.

Then Sharon remembers that she actually doesn’t need to get up tomorrow. There isn’t work.

“What am I going to do today?” she mutters out loud. Her voice sounds strange to her.

At four o’clock in the morning, she is curled up in front of her television watching cartoons and eating Lucky Charms. There isn’t anything to do. Spongebob is on.

Her phone rings, the landline. She looks at the clock, and starts when she sees seven o’clock blinking bleary at her.

“Hello?” she mutters into the phone.

“It’s Natasha,” says a cheerful voice on the other hand. It totally is; Sharon groans internally.

“What are you doing?” she asks. “It’s seven in the morning.”

“And what are you up to?”

“Watching cartoons,” Sharon says. “Spongebob.”

“God, you’re a mess,” Natasha laughs.

“It’s not funny,” Sharon sighs. “I woke up and I couldn’t go to work.”

“That’s okay,” Natasha says. “Now you have a day to burn.”

Sharon looks at the copy of _Infinite Jest_ on her couch, still untouched, and sighs.

“Do you have to be anywhere today?” Sharon asks hopefully.

“Not really,” Natasha says. “It’s Saturday, after all. Wanna go to the movies?”


	4. Chapter 4

Natasha likes crappy movies with old special effects. She brings VHS tapes of Ray Harryhausen movies, and she proudly confesses to watching _Jurassic Park_ at least fifteen times. Watching Jurassic Park with Natasha is a capital-E Experience.

Natasha has no place to be except in Sharon’s apartment, making plain oatmeal with a tiny bowl of peanut butter to the side, ruining Sharon’s coffee maker, scoffing at the concept of footnotes in fiction.

“It makes sense for _Infinite Jest_ ,” Sharon argues, unfruitfully. She’s made lamentable headway on the book, and it’s all Natasha’s fault.

“No it doesn’t,” Natasha says. “Those are for… sources and stuff. I had to put one on a report once. When I was in school.”

“Did you go to school here? In America?” Sharon asks.

“Yeah,” Natasha says, and changes the subject. “So what about a week trip to New York?”

“What about it?”

“My friend is leaving for a week and he wants me to dogsit,” Natasha says. “I thought if you’re feeling up to it, you’d like to come with me?”

“Um,” Sharon says.

“We could go to the theatre. Museums. And stuff,” Natasha says.

“Look, are you wooing me?”

“Do you want to be wooed?” Natasha challenges. “Or do you want to go to New York?”

“…I want to go to New York.”

“Great! I got a company car, and my favourite truck stops all marked on a map. Let’s go tomorrow!”

Sharon likes having Natasha as a friend.

The next morning, Natasha shows up bright and early with a shiny company car and snacks for the road. She takes Sharon’s bag and hefts it into the back, then opens the door for Sharon and hands her a coffee.

“Thanks,” Sharon says, and hesitates getting in the car, because, all of a sudden, this is just like Gapolli.

“Hey,” Natasha says, and shuts the car door. “Everything okay?”

“Stupid,” Sharon mutters. “I felt like I was getting shot at again.”

“Oh,” Natasha says. “Wanna sit in the back?”

“Can I?” Sharon says.

“It’s not stupid,” Natasha promises, and opens the back seat for Sharon. Sharon feels a lot better with a seat in front of her.

“Hey,” Natasha says, glancing out the rearview mirror. “When I was eight, I was top of my class. I could speak four languages but nobody had taught me to read or write. The first person I killed was my age, was my friend. Sometimes when I see small children, I can hear… I get frightened too.”

“Oh,” Sharon says, sipping her coffee. She feels even dumber for balking at a car door opening.

“My point is we both have the same reactions, sometimes. And it’s not stupid. It’s not weak. It’s something that needs to happen, like eating.”

“You can overeat.”

“You can starve,” Natasha shrugs. “Don’t feel bad because you’re still going over what happened. You don’t want to sit in front seat. So don’t.”

“What happens when I have to?” Sharon asks. Natasha shrugs.

“There’s a great pie shop coming up,” she says instead.

Sharon tucks into one of the most momentous and perfect slice of apple pie she’s ever had. Natasha picks at a bowl of vanilla ice cream before asking for a plate of mashed potatoes with some gravy on the side.

“I don’t get it,” Sharon says. “You know the pie’s good, you came here because it’s good, and you’re sticking to potatoes?”

“Yeah,” Natasha says. “Food isn’t fun for me sometimes. On a long road trip like this it’s best to play it safe.”

“Oh,” Sharon says, thinking back to Natasha’s plain rice at the restaurant and her habitually plain oatmeal, accoutrements always to the side.


	5. Chapter 5

The apartment they’re watching is the cruddiest place Sharon has ever seen in her short life. Natasha searches her keyring for the keys he gave her before she shrugs and jiggles the lock a few times so the door swings open. A dog of untraceable breeding trots up to them, with trusting and expectant brown eyes.

“Hey Lucky!” Natasha says with a wide smile, and kneels down to give the dog ear scratches. “Who’s the most fearsome wolf in the borough?”

Sharon thinks that Lucky might not even be the most fearsome wolf in the apartment, and looks at the state of things.

“Clint is constantly in a precarious situation,” Natasha says, seeing Sharon’s wayward glance. “Shadow agencies don’t pay as much as they used to.”

“Oh, he’s one of ours?” Sharon asks, startled. On her salary, she can comfortably afford her rent-controlled flat in the Capitol, and this arrangement seems like it was negotiated for with extranumerary exchange.

“He’s also not very good with money,” Natasha shrugs. “Don’t worry, the place is very secure.”

“You didn’t even jimmy the lock. You just shook it around a bit,” Sharon points out. Natasha scoffs.

“You and doors.”

Clint has left bright purple post-it notes all over the apartment, everything pertaining to the dog. FEED HIM **DOG FOOD** TWICE A DAY, says one. NO PIZZA FOR THE DOG, says another, HE GETS THE RUNS. HE DOESN’T LIKE WALKS BUT IT  WON’T ACTUALLY KILL HIM IF YOU DRAG HIM AROUND THE BLOCK A COUPLE OF TIMES, says a note stuck on a chewed up leash.

THANKS NAT, HAVE SOME OF MRS. MARKOPOLOS’ BAKLAVA, is the last note Sharon finds, on a Pyrex dish filled with the rich honey dessert. Natasha wrinkles her nose.

“If you like baklava, knock yourself out,” she says to Sharon. “Let’s see if his cable is paid up.”

Clint’s cable is like four or five cables spliced together and connected to a television that was old when Reagan was president. It works, miraculously, and Natasha puts it on Univision almost immediately. A telenovela starts flickering on the grainy screen.

“Oh perfect, I was hoping I could catch the tail end of Claudia’s arc,” she says gleefully. “After this let’s go out and see the city.”

Lucky hops on Sharon’s lap and Sharon is surprised by how heavy such a small dog can be. It’s nice though, and he doesn’t shed as much as the furry apartment had led her to believe. Maybe Clint just never vacuums.

“Who the hell is Clint, anyway?” she asks. “An operative I’d know?”

“Oh, you know Hawkeye?” Natasha says. “That’s him.”

“Really??”

“His apartment kind of kills the mystique, but really,” Natasha says with a smile. “He was very kind to me when I came to America.”

Sharon has heard of that, heard about how Hawkeye made a different call when it came to the Black Widow, but truthfully, Sharon hadn’t realized how young Natasha must have been all those years ago. If faced with the choice of killing or sparing a child, regardless of how weaponized, Sharon hopes she would make the same call.

“I was not a loveable child,” Natasha continues. “But he’s always had a weakness for unloveable things, I suppose. Anyway, you should put on your prettiest dress. I know a lovely old Russian couple that will treat us like royalty for high tea. Have you had Russian high tea?”

“I can’t say I have,” Sharon says. She puts on a pretty printed dress that Natasha had somehow found in her closet, but that she can’t remember purchasing. Natasha helps her with her makeup and hair, and then opens the door for her.

It’s a quaint little spot which is on the ground floor of an apartment building, but as soon as they step inside from the residential building’s lobby, they are transported into some kind of Russia Sharon had only seen exemplified on BBC’s _War and Peace_. A four foot nothing black woman with a high, accented voice and a beautiful smile greets Natasha like she’s the grand duchess Anastasia, and then goes on her tiptoes to kiss Sharon on both cheeks.

“Best spot for our Natashenka,” she says, leading them to a corner table where both of them can sit with their backs to a blank wall. “I will bring you buffalo grass tea, good for the skin, good for the hair. Tastes like good health, brisk walk.”

“Thank you so much, Nadya,” Natasha says, and the old lady beams.

“Alexei will be so happy to know you dropped by,” Nadya says. “He sleeps in the sun room around this time.”

“Don’t wake him on my account,” Natasha says hastily. “Let the old man rest.”

Nadya bustles off, and Natasha raises a glass of water.

“To old friends, and new,” she says. “May the meeting of the two always be so happy.”

“I love this place,” Sharon says. “How do you know her? She’s lovely.”

“We have a history,” Natasha says. “In old country. We grew up together.”

“But she’s so much older than you,” Sharon says.

“It’s a long story,” Natasha shrugs. “Strange things happen.”

Sharon doesn’t push the subject.

Russian high tea is an event, involving tiny sandwiches with no crusts, little bowls of cream and berries, and a good deal of rice pudding for Natasha, with gem-coloured jams and honey in accompanying bowls. Sharon could eat this way forever, but even she has to turn away the eighth or so course of tiny, gorgeous plates.

“Let me pack you a basket,” Nadya says. “I’m assuming you’re in the city for business and not just pleasure.”

“Very light business,” Natasha concedes.

“Very light basket, I promise,” Nadya says. Their bill is waived and Sharon’s cheeks are kissed once more.

“She was incredibly sweet,” Sharon says, while Natasha carries a huge basket positively laden with sweets, preserves, and fresh bread.

“Nadya to a tee. This work suits her very well,” Natasha says. “Are you still hungry?”

“Not in the least.”

“Me neither,” Natasha says. “Let’s go home and watch a pay per movie.”

That night, nibbling at some kind of Russian pickle while in her pyjamas, Sharon finally feels less displaced and more like a person. Lucky has decided that she has the go-to lap, and has been begging her for a pickle since she opened the little jar.

“Lucky no,” Sharon says. Lucky huffs and rolls onto his back. Natasha chuckles.

“You’re trapped now,” she says, and absentmindedly reaches over to rub Lucky’s tummy. Lucky whines and his tongue flops out of his mouth. He is possibly the happiest wolf in the borough.


	6. Chapter 6

Sharon wakes up reaching for a gun under her pillow. Natasha is already up and puts her finger over her mouth when she sees Sharon awake. Lucky is still asleep, and the robber is in the next room. Clint lives in a shitty part of town.

Natasha goes first, and opens the door. The rummaging continues and this must be child’s play for the Black Widow, but her brow is furrowed and she isn’t engaging. Sharon is about to ask why the hesitation, and then Natasha barges through, _shooting her gun_. Sharon makes every effort to follow, but finds that she’s frozen in place.

A struggle commences and several things shatter, and eventually Sharon hears the dull thud of someone hitting the floor, and then Natasha saying, “You are a fool, to come alone. Who hired you?”

“I didn’t know the famous Black Widow would be here,” says the robber, who is clearly not a robber. “I wouldn’t have taken the job if I had. That’s probably why nobody told me.”

“Answer my question and this becomes less humiliating for you,” Natasha says. “Who is your employer, and why did you come here?”

“For Carter,” he says, and Sharon’s blood runs cold. “Went to her apartment and I didn’t find her, so I went to where Fury sends all his loudmouthed rejects.”

“Enough,” Natasha says. “Your employer. Now.”

“The Liebowitz foundation. What you think is the Liebowitz foundation.”

“Interesting,” Natasha says. “I’ve never heard of them.”

“When Carter stops hiding, why don’t you ask her?”

Natasha calls for the two agents surveying the complex to take the intruder, and Sharon feels so ashamed she could cry.

“Looks like you made the right call in Gapolli,” Natasha says.

“Are you just my protection?” Sharon asks.

“I was assigned to watch you during your suspension,” Natasha nods.

“And I believed that you just randomly…” Sharon says, and shakes her head.

“I’m having a lot of fun,” Natasha promises. Lucky is just starting to wake up, and she clicks her tongue at him. “Some guard dog you are!”

“So I’ve been suspended because I’m right?” Sharon says, and feels simultaneously terrified and bubbly. “Vindicated!”

“Don’t let it go to your head, your life is in danger and Nick is still angry with you,” Natasha says with a roll of her eyes. “But yes, I guess you were right.”

“IS this what being right feels like all the time?” Sharon grins.

“I wouldn’t know. I’m only right most of the time,” Natasha responds. “Now why don’t we make like Leo DiCaprio and depart?”

“That was…”

“Bad pun?”

“Horrible.”

“English is just my second language,” Natasha says. “And at least I try. I’ve never heard you make a joke.”

Natasha has disguises stashed at Clint’s place, which is weird, but okay. She tosses Sharon a limply curling brown wig and picks a straight black one for herself.

“Why am I the frumpy one?”

“It’s not believable when I try to look frumpy,” Natasha says, as though this is the most obvious thing.

“What, and I am?”

“Put the wig on, Carter.”

And as Sharon puts on the corresponding bronze-wired glasses and plaid three-piece, she can acknowledge that she is convincing when frumpy. She’s okay with that.

“Look it,” Natasha says gleefully. “I look like the little girl in The Professional.”

“You do,” Sharon says. “That’s bizarre.”

“Okay,” Natasha says, tossing Sharon a wallet with ID that says Sharon is someone named Veronica Sawyer. “Let’s go.”

“What about Lucky?” Sharon says, feeling a little guilty when she looks at the dog, who cocks his head in her direction.

“Clint’s wife is coming for him, don’t worry.”

“Hawkeye is _married_?”

“Don’t act so surprised,” Natasha says. “You don’t even know him. Now let’s go, Veronica.”

“All right, Heather.”

They get on the subway, which is practically empty. Sharon wonders if SHIELD intervened so the place would be deserted, and her suspicions are confirmed when a black man with a neat mustache boards their car, hands Natasha a file, and promptly gets off.

“What's that?”

“Plane tickets,” Natasha says. “Passports.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re finishing what you started,” Natasha says. “We’re going back to Galpolli.”

“Oh,” Sharon says, stomach dropping as though she’s already on a plane. “Okay.”

And she puts her head between her knees and screams.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the long-gestating work on Sharon Carter I've been working on. Natasha's characterization is largely informed by Red Cashmere Sweater, but you don't need to read that to understand how she ticks.


End file.
